| Examples in Thematic Order |  |
Preface
| Example About the examples An explanation of the examples in this documentation, and the asterisks attached to them. Click the heading of the example, or the example number, to reveal the text. | |
| Example Midsummer Day A few sentences laying out a garden together with some things which might be found in it. | |
Disenchantment Bay
| Example Disenchantment Bay 1 A running example in this chapter, Disenchantment Bay, involves chartering a boat. This is the first step: creating the cabin. | |
Information Only
Varying What Is Written
| Example Ahem Writing a phrase, with several variant forms, whose function is to follow a rule several times. | |
| Example Curare A phrase that chooses and names the least-recently selected item from the collection given, allowing the text to cycle semi-randomly through a group of objects. | |
| Example Odins Making [is-are] and [it-they] say tokens that will choose appropriately based on the last object mentioned. | |
| Example Numberless A simple exercise in printing the names of random numbers, comparing the use of "otherwise if...", a switch statement, or a table-based alternative. | |
| Example Prolegomena Replacing precise numbers with "some" or other quantifiers when too many objects are clustered together for the player to count at a glance. | |
| Example Blink Making a "by atmosphere" token, allowing us to design our own text variations such as "[one of]normal[or]gloomy[or]scary[by atmosphere]". | |
Varying What Is Read
|  Example Laura Some general advice about creating objects with unusual or awkward names, and a discussion of the use of printed names. | |
| Example Quiz Show In this example by Mike Tarbert, the player can occasionally be quizzed on random data from a table; the potential answers will only be understood if a question has just been asked. | |
|  Example North by Northwest Creating additional compass directions between those that already exist (for instance, NNW) -- and dealing with an awkwardness that arises when the player tries to type "north-northwest". The example demonstrates a way around the nine-character limit on parsed words. | |
Using the Player's Input
Room Descriptions
| Example Ant-Sensitive Sunglasses What are activities good for? Controlling output when we want the same action to be able to produce very flexible text depending on the state of the world -- in this case, making highly variable room description and object description text. | |
| Example Priority Lab A debugging rule useful for checking the priorities of objects about to be listed. | |
| Example Low Light An object that is only visible and manipulable when a bright light fixture is on. | |
|  Example The Eye of the Idol A systematic way to allow objects in certain places to be described in the room description body text rather than in paragraphs following the room description, and to control whether supporters list their contents or not. | |
| Example Rip Van Winkle A simple way to allow objects in certain places to be described in the room description body text rather than in paragraphs following the room description. | |
| Example Infiltration A room whose description changes depending on the number of times the player has visited. | |
| Example Night Sky A room which changes its description depending on whether an object has been examined. | |
Map
| Example Port Royal 1 A partial implementation of Port Royal, Jamaica, set before the earthquake of 1692 demolished large portions of the city. | |
|  Example A&E Using regions to block access to an entire area when the player does not carry a pass, regardless of which entrance he uses. | |
| Example Zork II A "Carousel Room", as in Zork II, where moving in any direction from the room leads (at random) to one of the eight rooms nearby. | |
| Example All Roads Lead to Mars Layout where the player is allowed to wander any direction he likes, and the map will arrange itself in order so that he finds the correct "next" location. | |
| Example Indirection Renaming the directions of the compass so that "white" corresponds to north, "red" to east, "yellow" to south, and "black" to west. | |
Position Within Rooms
| Example When? A door whose description says "...leads east" in one place and "...leads west" in the other. | |
Continuous Spaces and The Outdoors
| Example Whither? A door whose description says where it leads; and which automatically understands references such as "the west door" and "the east door" depending on which direction it leads from the location. | |
| Example Higher Calling All doors in the game automatically attempt to open if the player approaches them when they are closed. | |
|  Example Elsie A door that closes automatically one turn after the player opens it. | |
| Example Wainwright Acts A technical note about checking the location of door objects when characters other than the player are interacting with them. | |
Doors, Staircases, and Bridges
|  Example One Short Plank A plank bridge which breaks if the player is carrying something when he goes across it. Pushing anything over the bridge is forbidden outright. | |
|  Example Carnivale An alternative to backdrops when we want something to be visible from a distance but only touchable from one room. | |
| Example Waterworld A backdrop which the player can examine, but cannot interact with in any other way. | |
|  Example Tiny Garden A lawn made up of several rooms, with part of the description written automatically. | |
|  Example Rock Garden A simple open landscape where the player can see between rooms and will automatically move to touch things in distant rooms. | |
|  Example Hotel Stechelberg Signposts such as those provided on hiking paths in the Swiss Alps, which show the correct direction and hiking time to all other locations. | |
Windows
| Example Vitrine An electrochromic window that becomes transparent or opaque depending on whether it is currently turned on. | |
|  Example Port Royal 4 A cell window through which the player can see people who were in Port Royal in the current year of game-time. | |
|  Example Dinner is Served A window between two locations. When the window is open, the player can reach through into the other location; when it isn't, access is barred. | |
Lighting
| Example Hymenaeus Understanding "flaming torch" and "extinguished torch" to refer to torches when lit and unlit. | |
| Example Reflections Emphasizing the reflective quality of shiny objects whenever they are described in the presence of the torch. | |
| Example Peeled Two different approaches to adjusting what the player can interact with, compared. | |
Sounds
| Example The Undertomb 1 A small map of dead ends, in which the sound of an underground river has different strengths in different caves. | |
| Example Four Stars 2 Using "deciding the scope" to change the content of lists such as "the list of audible things which can be touched by the player". | |
Passers-By, Weather and Astronomical Events
| Example Weathering The automatic weather station atop Mt. Pisgah shows randomly fluctuating temperature, pressure and cloud cover. | |
| Example Night and Day Cycling through a sequence of scenes to represent day and night following one another during a game. | |
|  Example Totality To schedule an eclipse of the sun, which involves a number of related events. | |
The Passage Of Time
| Example Uptempo Adjust time advancement so the game clock moves fifteen minutes each turn. | |
|  Example Endurance Giving different actions a range of durations using a time allotment rulebook. | |
Scripted Scenes
|  Example Entrapment A scene in which the player is allowed to explore as much as he likes, but another character strolls in as soon as he has gotten himself into an awkward or embarrassing situation. | |
Event Scheduling
|  Example IPA Shops which each have opening and closing hours, so that it is impossible to go in at the wrong times, and the player is kicked out if he overstays his welcome. | |
Scene Changes
| Example Age of Steam The railway-station examples so far put together into a short game called "Age of Steam". | |
|  Example Meteoric I and II A meteor in the night sky which is visible from many rooms, so needs to be a backdrop, but which does not appear until 11:31 PM. | |
Flashbacks
Plot Management
The Human Body
| Example rBGH The player character's height is selected randomly at the start of play. | |
|  Example Slouching A system of postures allowing the player and other characters to sit, stand, or lie down explicitly or implicitly on a variety of enterable supporters or containers, or in location. | |
Traits Determined By the Player
| Example Identity Theft Allowing the player to enter a name to be used for the player character during the game. | |
Characterization
Background
| Example Merlin A REMEMBER command which accepts any text and looks up a response in a table of recollections. | |
Memory and Knowledge
| Example Puncak Jaya When a character is not visible, responding to such commands as EXAMINE PETER and PETER, HELLO with a short note that the person in question is no longer visible. | |
| Example Tense Boxing An overview of all the variations of past and present tenses, and how they might be used. | |
Viewpoint
|  Example Uncommon Ground Making a "by viewpoint" token, allowing us to design our own text variations such as "[show to yourself]quaint[to Lolita]thrilling[to everyone else]squalid[end show]" depending on the identity of the player at the moment. | |
| Example The Crane's Leg 2 A description text generated based on the propensities of the player-character, following different rulebooks for different characters. | |
Modifying Existing Commands
Looking
| Example Verbosity 1 Making rooms give full descriptions each time we enter, even if we have visited before. | |
| Example Verbosity 2 Making rooms give full descriptions each time we enter, even if we have visited before, and disallowing player use of BRIEF and SUPERBRIEF. | |
Examining
| Example Odin Replacing "You see nothing special..." with a different default message for looking at something nondescript. | |
Looking Under and Hiding
| Example Beachfront An item that the player can't interact with until he has found it by searching the scenery. | |
| Example Flashlight Visibility set so that looking under objects produces no result unless the player has a light source to shine there (regardless of the light level of the room). | |
| Example Matreshka A SEARCH [room] action that will open every container the player can see, stopping only when there don't remain any that are closed, unlocked, and openable. | |
Inventory
|  Example Equipment List Overview of all the phrase options associated with listing, and examples of how to change the inventory list into some other standard formats. | |
| Example Oyster Wide Shut Replacing Inform's default printing of properties such as "(closed)", "(open and providing light)", etc., with our own, more flexible variation. | |
Taking, Dropping, Inserting and Putting
| Example Replanting Changing the response when the player tries to take something that is scenery. | |
| Example Removal TAKE expanded to give responses such as "You take the book from the shelf." or "You pick up the toy from the ground." | |
| Example Celadon Using the enclosure relation to let the player drop things which he only indirectly carries. | |
| Example Morning After When the player picks something up which he hasn't already examined, the object is described. | |
Going, Pushing Things in Directions
|  Example Up and Up Adding a short message as the player approaches a room, before the room description itself appears. | |
| Example Veronica An effect that occurs only when the player leaves a region entirely. | |
| Example Saint Eligius Adding a first look rule that comments on locations when we visit them for the first time, inserting text after objects are listed but before any "every turn" rules might occur. | |
| Example Misadventure A going by name command which does respect movement rules, and accepts names of rooms as commands. | |
|  Example Safari Guide The same functionality, but making the player continue to move until he reaches his destination or a barrier, handling all openable doors on the way. | |
| Example Minimal Movement Supplying a default direction for "go", so that "leave", "go", etc., are always interpreted as "out". | |
|  Example Wonderland Hiking Mount Rainier, with attention to which locations are higher and which lower than the present location. | |
Entering and Exiting, Sitting and Standing
| Example Lies Commands to allow the player to lie down in three different ways. | |
| Example Anchorite By default, Inform understands GET OFF, GET UP, or GET OUT when the player is sitting or standing on an enterable object. We might also want to add GET DOWN and DOWN as exit commands, though: | |
| Example Get Axe Changing the check rules to try automatically leaving a container before attempting to take it. (And arranging things so that other people will do likewise.) | |
Waiting, Sleeping
Magic Words
| Example XYZZY Basics of adding a new command reviewed, for the case of the simple magic word XYZZY. | |
Remembering, Converting and Combining Actions
| Example Fine Laid Making writing that can be separately examined from the paper on which it appears, but which directs all other actions to the paper. | |
| Example Lucy Redirecting a question about one topic to ask about another. | |
| Example I Didn't Come All The Way From Great Portland Street In this fiendishly difficult puzzle, which may perhaps owe some inspiration to a certain BBC Radio panel game (1967-), a list is used as a set of actions to help enforce the rule that the player must keep going for ten turns without hesitation, repetition, or deviating from the subject on the card. | |
|  Example Anteaters The player carries a gizmo that is able to record actions performed by the player, then force him to repeat them when the gizmo is dropped. This includes storing actions that apply to topics, as in "look up anteater colonies in the guide". | |
Actions on Multiple Objects
|  Example Escape from the Seraglio Replacing the usual response to TAKE ALL so that instead of output such as "grapes: Taken. orange: Taken.", Inform produces variable responses in place of "grapes:". | |
|  Example The Facts Were These Creating a variant GIVE action that lets the player give multiple objects simultaneously with commands like GIVE ALL TO ATTENDANT or GIVE THREE DOLLARS TO ATTENDANT or GIVE PIE AND HAT TO ATTENDANT. The attendant accepts the gifts only if their total combined value matches some minimum amount. | |
Alternate Default Messages
| Example We Replacing the standard action report rules to reflect our own design. | |
Clarification and Correction
| Example Alpaca Farm A generic USE action which behaves sensibly with a range of different objects. | |
| Example Apples Prompting the player on how to disambiguate otherwise similar objects. | |
| Example WXPQ Creating a more sensible parser error than "that noun did not make sense in this context". | |
Alternatives To Standard Parsing
|  Example Cloves Accepting adverbs anywhere in a command, registering what the player typed but then cutting them out before interpreting the command. | |
|  Example Down in Oodville Offering the player a choice of numbered options at certain times, without otherwise interfering with his ability to give regular commands. | |
Getting Acquainted
| Example Belfry You can see a bat, a bell, some woodworm, William Snelson, the sexton's wife, a bellringer and your local vicar here. | |
|  Example Gopher-wood Changing the name of a character in the middle of play, removing the article. | |
|  Example Peers The peers of the English realm come in six flavours - Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, Duke and Prince - and must always be addressed properly. While a peerage is for life, it may at the royal pleasure be promoted. | |
| Example Clueless A murderer for the mystery is selected randomly at the beginning of the game. | |
Liveliness
|  Example Camp Bethel Creating characters who change their behavior from turn to turn, and a survey of other common uses for alternative texts. | |
Reactive Characters
| Example Zodiac Several variations on "doing something other than...", demonstrating different degrees of restriction. | |
| Example Police State Several friends who obey you; a policeman who doesn't (but who takes a dim view of certain kinds of antics). | |
| Example Pine 1 Pine: Using a scene to watch for the solution of a puzzle, however arrived-at by the player. | |
Barter and Exchange
|  Example Bribery A GIVE command that gets rid of Inform's default refusal message in favor of something a bit more sophisticated. | |
Combat and Death
| Example Red Cross A DIAGNOSE command which allows the player to check on the health of someone. | |
| Example Lanista 1 Very simple randomized combat in which characters hit one another for a randomized amount of damage. | |
|  Example Lanista 2 Randomized combat in which the damage done depends on what weapons the characters are wielding, and in which an ATTACK IT WITH action is created to replace regular attacking. Also folds a new DIAGNOSE command into the system. | |
|  Example Puff of Orange Smoke A system in which every character has a body, which is left behind when the person dies; attempts to do something to the body are redirected to the person while the person is alive. | |
Getting Started with Conversation
Saying Simple Things
| Example Sybil 1 Direct all ASK, TELL, and ANSWER commands to ASK, and accept multiple words for certain cases. | |
|  Example Sybil 2 Making the character understand YES, SAY YES TO CHARACTER, TELL CHARACTER YES, ANSWER YES, and CHARACTER, YES. | |
|  Example Proposal Asking the player a yes/no question which he must answer, and another which he may answer or not as he chooses. | |
Saying Complicated Things
|  Example Farewell People who respond to conversational gambits, summarize what they said before if asked again, and provide recap of conversation that is past. | |
|  Example Sweeney A conversation where each topic may have multiple questions and answers associated with it, and where a given exchange can lead to new additions to the list. | |
Character Emotion
| Example Being Peter A set of rules determining the attitude a character will take when asked about certain topics. | |
Character Knowledge and Reasoning
|  Example Murder on the Orient Express A number of sleuths (the player among them) find themselves aboard the Orient Express, where a murder has taken place, and one of them is apparently the culprit. Naturally they do not agree on whom, but there is physical evidence which may change their minds... | |
Characters Following a Script
| Example Robo 1 A robot which watches and records the player's actions, then tries to repeat them back in the same order when he is switched into play-back mode. | |
Traveling Characters
|  Example Odyssey A person who follows a path predetermined and stored in a table, and who can be delayed if the player tries to interact with her. | |
|  Example Actaeon A FOLLOW command allowing the player to pursue a person who has just left the room. | |
Obedient Characters
|  Example Generation X A person who goes along with the player's instructions, but reluctantly, and will get annoyed after too many repetitions of the same kind of unsuccessful command. | |
| Example Virtue Defining certain kinds of behavior as inappropriate, so that other characters will refuse indignantly to do any such thing. | |
|  Example Northstar Making Inform understand ASK JOSH TO TAKE INVENTORY as JOSH, TAKE INVENTORY. This requires us to use a regular expression on the player's command, replacing some of the content. | |
Goal-Seeking Characters
|  Example The Man of Steel An escaping action which means "go to any room you can reach from here", and is only useful to non-player characters. | |
| Example IQ Test Introducing Ogg, a person who will unlock and open a container when the player tells him to get something inside. | |
Social Groups
|  Example Happy Hour Listing visible characters as a group, then giving some followup details in the same paragraph about specific ones. | |
| Example Unthinkable Alliances People are to be grouped into alliances. To kiss someone is to join his or her faction, which may make a grand alliance; to strike them is to give notice of quitting, and to become a lone wolf. | |
|  Example Emma Social dynamics in which groups of people form and circulate during a party. | |
Bicycles, Cars and Boats
|  Example Straw Boater Using text properties that apply only to some things and are not defined for others. | |
| Example No Relation A car which must be turned on before it can be driven, and can only go to roads. | |
| Example Peugeot A journey from one room to another that requires the player to be on a vehicle. | |
Ships, Trains and Elevators
|  Example Empire A train which follows a schedule, stopping at a number of different locations. | |
Animals
| Example Feline Behavior A cat which reacts to whatever items it has handy, returning the result of a rulebook for further processing. | |
Furniture
|  Example Yolk of Gold Set of drawers where the item the player seeks is always in the last drawer he opens, regardless of the order of opening. | |
| Example Princess and the Pea The player is unable to sleep on a mattress (or stack of mattresses) because the bottom one has something uncomfortable under it. | |
|  Example Swigmore U. Adding a new kind of supporter called a perch, where everything dropped lands on the floor. | |
| Example Kiwi Creating a raised supporter kind whose contents the player can't see or take from the ground. | |
| Example Tamed Examples of a container and a supporter that can be entered, as well as nested rooms. | |
| Example Circle of Misery Retrieving items from an airport luggage carousel is such fun, how can we resist simulating it, using a list as a ring buffer? | |
Kitchen and Bathroom
Food
| Example Stone A soup to which the player can add ingredients, which will have different effects when the player eats. | |
| Example Candy One of several identical candies chosen at the start of play to be poisonous. | |
| Example MRE Hunger that eventually kills the player, and foodstuffs that can delay the inevitable by different amounts of time. | |
Bags, Bottles, Boxes and Safes
| Example Safety A safe whose dial can be turned with SPIN SAFE TO 1131, and which will open only with the correct combination. | |
| Example Eyes, Fingers, Toes A safe with a multi-number combination, meant to be dialed over multiple turns, is implemented using a log of the last three numbers dialed. The log can then be compared to the safe's correct combination. | |
|  Example Trachypachidae Maturin 1803 Bottles with removable stoppers: when the stopper is in the bottle, the bottle is functionally closed, but the stopper can also be removed and used elsewhere. Descriptions of the bottle reflect its state intelligently. | |
| Example Cinco A taco shell that can be referred to (when it contains things) in terms of its contents. | |
| Example Shipping Trunk A box of baking soda whose name changes to "completely ineffective baking soda" when it is in a container with something that smells funny. | |
| Example Unpeeled Calling an onion "a single yellow onion" when (and only when) it is being listed as the sole content of a room or container. | |
|  Example Hudsucker Industries Letters which are described differently as a group, depending on whether the player has read none, some, or all of them, and on whether they are alike or unlike. | |
Clothing
|  Example What Not To Wear A general-purpose clothing system that handles a variety of different clothing items layered in different combinations over different areas of the body. | |
Money
| Example Frozen Assets A treatment of money which keeps track of how much the player has on him, and a BUY command which lets him go shopping. | |
|  Example Fabrication A system of assembling clothing from a pattern and materials; both the pattern and the different fabrics have associated prices. | |
| Example Widget Enterprises Allowing the player to set a price for a widget on sale, then determining the resulting sales based on consumer demand, and the resulting profit and loss. | |
Dice and Playing Cards
| Example Do Pass Go A pair of dice which can be rolled, and are described with their current total when not carried, and have individual scores when examined. | |
Reading Matter
| Example Pages A book with pages that can be read by number (as in "read page 3 in...") and which accepts relative page references as well (such as "read the last page of...", "read the next page", and so on). | |
|  Example Bibliophilia A bookshelf with a number of books, where the player's command to examine something will be interpreted as an attempt to look up titles if the bookshelf is present, but otherwise given the usual response. | |
|  Example AARP-Gnosis An Encyclopedia set which treats volumes in the same place as a single object, but can also be split up. | |
|  Example The Fifth Body An expansion on the notebook, allowing the player somewhat more room in which to type his recorded remark. | |
Painting and Labeling Devices
| Example Palette An artist's workshop in which the canvas can be painted in any colour, and where painterly names for pigments ("cerulean") are accepted alongside everyday ones ("blue"). | |
Simple Machines
| Example Control Center Objects which automatically include a description of their component parts whenever they are examined. | |
Televisions and Radios
| Example Aspect Understanding aspect ratios (a unit) in the names of televisions. | |
Telephones
Clocks and Scientific Instruments
| Example Tom's Midnight Garden A clock kind that can be set to any time using "the time understood"; may be turned on and off; and will advance itself only when running. Time on the face is also reported differently depending on whether the clock is analog or digital. | |
|  Example Ginger Beer A portable magic telescope which allows the player to view items in another room of his choice. | |
| Example Witnessed 2 A piece of ghost-hunting equipment that responds depending on whether or not the meter is on and a ghost is visible or touchable from the current location. | |
Cameras and Recording Devices
| Example Originals Allowing the player to create models of anything in the game world; parsing the name "model [thing]" or even just "[thing]" to refer to these newly-created models; asking "which do you mean, the model [thing] or the actual [thing]" when there is ambiguity. | |
| Example Mirror, Mirror The sorcerer's mirror can, when held up high, form an impression of its surroundings which it then preserves. | |
|  Example Actor's Studio A video camera that records actions performed in its presence, and plays them back with time-stamps. | |
Gases
Liquids
| Example Flotation Objects that can sink or float in a well, depending on their own properties and the state of the surrounding environment. | |
|  Example Xylan Creating a new command that does require an object to be named; and some comments about the choice of vocabulary, in general. | |
| Example Thirst A waterskin that is depleted as the player drinks from it. | |
Dispensers and Supplies of Small Objects
|  Example Extra Supplies A supply of red pens from which the player can take another pen only if he doesn't already have one somewhere in the game world. | |
| Example Pizza Prince Providing a pizza buffet from which the player can take as many pieces as he wants. | |
Glass and Other Damage-Prone Substances
| Example Spring Cleaning A character who sulks over objects that the player has broken (and which are now off-stage). | |
|  Example Kyoto Expanding the effects of the THROW something AT something command so that objects do make contact with one another. | |
|  Example Terracottissima The flowerpots once again, but this time arranged so that after the first breakage all undamaged pots are said to be "unbroken", to distinguish them from the others. | |
|  Example Paddington A CUT [something] WITH [something] command which acts differently on different types of objects. | |
Volume, Height, Weight
|  Example Dimensions This example draws together the previous snippets into a working implementation of the weighbridge. | |
| Example Depth Receptacles that calculate internal volume and the amount of room available, and cannot be overfilled. | |
Ropes
Electricity and Magnetism
| Example Electrified Adding a rule before the basic accessibility rule that will prevent the player from touching electrified objects under the wrong circumstances. | |
| Example Rules of Attraction A magnet which picks up nearby metal objects, and describes itself appropriately in room descriptions and inventory listings, but otherwise goes by its ordinary name. | |
Fire
|  Example Bruneseau's Journey A candle which reacts to lighting and blowing actions differently depending on whether it has already been lit once. | |
| Example Thirst 2 A campfire added to the camp site, which can be lit using tinder. | |
|  Example The Cow Exonerated Creating a class of matches that burn for a time and then go out, with elegant reporting when several matches go out at once. | |
Heat
| Example Grilling A grill, from which the player is not allowed to take anything lest he burn himself. | |
| Example Masochism Deli Multiple potatoes, with rules to make the player drop the hot potato first and pick it up last. | |
| Example Entropy All objects in the game have a heat, but if not kept insulated they will tend toward room temperature (and at a somewhat exaggerated rate). | |
Magic (Breaking the Laws of Physics)
| Example Magneto's Revenge Kitty Pryde of the X-Men is able to reach through solid objects, so we might implement her with special powers that the player does not have... | |
| Example Interrogation A wand which, when waved, reveals the concealed items carried by people the player can see. | |
Mathematics
Start-Up Features
|  Example Hatless It's tempting to use "now..." to distribute items randomly at the start of play, but we need to be a little cautious about how we do that. | |
Saving and Undoing
| Example Spellbreaker P. David Lebling's classic "Spellbreaker" (1986) includes a room where the game cannot be saved: here is an Inform implementation. | |
Helping and Hinting
| Example Y ask Y? Noticing when the player seems to be at a loss, and recommending the use of hints. | |
|  Example Solitude Novice mode that prefaces every prompt with a list of possible commands the player could try, and highlights every important word used, to alert players to interactive items in the scenery. | |
| Example Query Catching all questions that begin with WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and similar question words, and responding with the instruction to use commands, instead. | |
| Example Ish. A (very) simple HELP command, using tokens to accept and interpret the player's text whatever it might be. | |
|  Example Trieste Table amendment to adjust HELP commands provided for the player. | |
Scoring
| Example Bosch Creating a list of actions that will earn the player points, and using this both to change the score and to give FULL SCORE reports. | |
Ending The Story
| Example Battle of Ridgefield Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore. | |
|  Example Xerxes Offering the player a menu of things to read after winning the game. | |
| Example Jamaica 1688 Adding a feature to the final question after victory, so that the player can choose to reveal notes about items in the game. | |
Typography
|  Example Tilt 3 Displaying the card suits from our deck of cards with red and black colored unicode symbols. | |
The Status Line
| Example Capital City To arrange that the location information normally given on the left-hand side of the status line appears in block capitals. | |
| Example Ways Out A status line that lists the available exits from the current location. | |
|  Example Guided Tour A status line that lists the available exits from the current location, changing the names of these exits depending on whether the room has been visited or not. | |
Footnotes
|  Example Ibid. A system which allows the author to assign footnotes to descriptions, and permits the player to retrieve them again by number, using "the number understood". Footnotes will automatically number themselves, according to the order in which the player discovers them. | |
Glulx Multimedia Effects
Testing
| Example Bic Testing to make sure that all objects have been given descriptions. | |
| Example Alpha Creating a beta-testing command that matches any line starting with punctuation. | |
Publishing
| Example Baedeker Creating a floorplan of the cathedral using the locations from previous examples. | |