Available for download:
To run WinFrotz click on it and goto File / Open new story...
IF Inform Interpreters for other Operating Systems / Computers.
Also try: All the ports of Windows and other Frotz, Z-Machine Interpreters and Interpreters.
Don't read this until you've played the game, otherwise it will give some of the puzzles away. Unless of course you've never played Interactive Fiction before and then you'll have to look at it to get an idea of how it works, which was after all their original function. Try typing 'help' first in the game for a list of Commands and Game Rules.
This is how I learned to program Inform. Tutorial in 8 parts about implementing a House.
Don't read this until you've completed the game. This shows you how the game works and will teach you a lot about Inform. The zip contains spacest2.inf plus 18 .h library modules used by the main program, 3 are standard libraries written by other authors but are included as the game won't compile properly without them. There is also a documentation.htm file in text and wordpad format describing interesting features and how the program works. Files included are:
- spacest2.inf
- -> declarations.h
- ->-> parser.h
- ->-> verblib.h
- ->-> asktellorder.h
- ->-> replacement_procs.h
- ->-> procs.h
- ->-> classes.h - Note: class Room has attribute has light.
- ->-> player.h
- -> actors.h
- -> dispenser.h
- -> scooter.h
- -> toolbox.h
- -> barrier.h
- -> map.h
- -> extended_grammer.h
- ->-> grammar.h
- -> footnote.h
- -> briefing_room.h
- -> control.h
- -> locktest.h
- -> spacewait.h
Don't read this until you've completed the game. I originally started programming the game in Pascal. This download is the final point I got to before switching to Inform and shows why it is much wiser to write adventure games using a specialist language than starting from scratch. Basically writing an adventure game from scratch is more than any one person can manage particularly when you take into accept the amount of testing that would be required. The download has the following files:
- Spacestation.exe - run file
- Infocom.pas - main file, all other files are library files
- Actors.pas - deals with all actors in the game i.e. the fussbudget
- Decoder.pas - has useful procedures that convert string words to enumerated types and vice versa, decode double words, remove the's, and convert a string to lowercase.
- general.pas - deals with odds and ends like status line, score and passage of time, including hunger.
- Global.pas - holds the core game variables like current_room, array of all rooms, and current sentence (up to 8 words).
- Map.pas - holds descriptions for all rooms in the game and procedures for all movement commands like look, north and sit.
- obj.pas - holds definitions and characteristics (like attributes in Inform, a case of parallel evolution) of objects like wearable, heavy, and in_room. Also has the procedure for the inventory command which can split words over lines so half of it doesn't appear on the line above.
- obj_char.pas - responses for eat and cut commands.
- obj_drop.pas - deals with dropping objects including into other objects.
- obj_lock.pas - deals with opening, closing, locking and unlocking objects.
- obj_take.pas - deals with taking objects.
- obj_wear.pas - deals with wearing and removing objects.
- Parser.pas - chops a complete sentence up into more manageable bits, calls commands and deals with the special oops command.
- Spooler.pas - deals with standard error responses and stops text if longer than one page until key pressed.
- Types.pas - most global variables and constants are stored here including many enumerated types. Also has functions to determine whether a variable is a room, object, direction or command.
Screen Shot of the game being run using the PalmFrotz interpreter.