PunyInform is a library written in Inform 6 which allows people to create text adventure games / interactive fiction using the Z-machine virtual machine, to be played on 8-bit computers as well as newer platforms. It provides a parser, implementations of common verbs, as well as a framework for writing text adventures.
PunyInform is based on the Inform 6 library, developed by Graham Nelson. We are trying to make it easy for authors used to writing in Inform 6 to start using PunyInform. There is a manual describing the differences.
Games using PunyInform can be compiled to z3, z5 and z8 format. Compared to the Inform 6 library, this means we lack support for Glulx, but we have support for z3 (which the Inform 6 library lacks).
To compile games using PunyInform, we recommend the official Inform 6 compiler maintained by David Kinder, at https://github.com/DavidKinder/Inform6 . Binaries can be found at if-archive . PunyInform requires Inform v6.34 or newer.
The main goal of PunyInform is to allow for games which are fast and have a small memory footprint. This should make the games run well on older architectures, such as the 8-bit computers of the 1980s. Our main target is to make it suitable for games on the Commodore 64 using Ozmoo.
PunyInform is fully working and has already been used for multiple games. We carefully add and change features and fix bugs as they are found. Please check releasenotes.txt for more details.
If you are interested in our progress, please star or follow the project here on Github. Announcements are made on https://twitter.com/FRamsberg and on https://intfiction.org/c/authoring/inform-6/66
You can read the manual on our wiki. It is also included as a PDF when you download PunyInform.
There is also a Game Author's Guide (under Documentation) with various tips for authors writing a game using PunyInform. It's not intended to teach the entire library, but more to give some tips you may find useful when you have a working knowledge of the library and you've started developing a game which you think you will release.
You can see what tasks we're currently working on, tasks we've done and tasks coming up on our Trello board: https://trello.com/b/mfGVsB4H/punyinform
These games are known to use PunyInform:
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Tristam Island, by Hugo Labrande.
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Behind Closed Doors 9B, by John Wilson.
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Alien Research Centre 3, by John Wilson.
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Return to the Castle, by John Wilson.
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The Fishing-Trip - Brown Trout and Goblins, by John Wilson.
All of these games can be downloaded from the links above. They are also available at Ozmoo Online where you can create disk images for Commodore C64, C128 or Plus/4.
Fredrik Ramsberg has written a few articles describing PunyInform for beginners:
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PunyInform, a new library for writing text adventures for old computers gives a general overview and introduction.
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PunyInform: Installing the tools and compiling a game goes more into detail on how to setup an environment with PunyInform and the inform compiler on Windows, and getting started on a simple game.
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PunyInform Coding 1: The Basics covers the fundamentals of developing a game using PunyInform.
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PunyInform Coding 2: Objects and Actions covers more of verbs, actions and adding code to objects in PunyInform.
Fredrik has also written a comparison of PunyInform and the standard Inform 6 library.
PunyInform was conceived and designed by Johan Berntsson and Fredrik Ramsberg. Coding by Johan Berntsson, Fredrik Ramsberg, Pablo Martinez and Tomas Öberg. Includes code from the Inform 6 standard library, by Graham Nelson. Thanks to Stefan Vogt, Jason Compton, John Wilson, Hugo Labrande, Richard Fairweather, Adam Sommerfield, auraes and Hannesss for issue reporting, advice, testing, code contributions and promotion. Thanks to David Kinder and Andrew Plotkin for helping out with compiler issues and sharing their deep knowledge of the compiler. Huge thanks to Graham Nelson for creating the Inform 6 compiler and library in the first place.