Re:The Visible Zorker: Zork 1
by rmunn on Sunday April 26, 2026 @11:39PM
(#47917481)
Inform 7 source code, at first glance, looks like plain English. It makes you start to wonder whether Inform 7 is actually an LLM and not a compiler. Then as you look at more code, you quickly start to see the structure of the language, and realize that it is indeed a programming language merely structured to look like English at first glance. But it's very cool that you can do things like this (example from the Inform 7 documentation):
This snippet omits the definition of "the lurking critter" (a standard NPC) and the sword (a standard object with a custom defined method called "adjust sword-glow to"), but it should give you a good idea of what Inform 7 source code looks like. (Inform 6 looked much more like a traditional programming language).
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> [Whether or not the critter has moved, we need to adjust the sword-glow, because the player may have moved.]
That must be a comment, right?
In that case: "The critter [one of]slouches[or]slithers[or]shambles[or]lurches[at random] away.";
[one of] [or] [at random] are also comments?