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awesome-interactive-fiction

Tools Shell

Awesome Interactive Fiction

A curated list of interactive fiction frameworks, tools, and resources.
Created by Yakira Dixon in 2014, currently maintained by Tristano Ajmone.


 

Contents

Introductory Material

Newcomers to Interactive Fiction will find these links helpful:

IF Authoring Tools

ADRIFT

ADRIFT (Adventure Development & Runner — Interactive Fiction Toolkit) is a GUI driven IF development system for Windows, allowing to create text adventures via dialog boxes and GUI controls instead of writing code. Supports graphics and sounds.

Developed by Campbell Wild since 1997, ADRIFT Developer (formerly called Adventure Generator) used to be a commercial product, then in 2011 it became freeware, and now the full source code is available on GitHub under BSD 3-Clause license.

There are different versions of ADRIFT, adventures created with a specific version of ADRIFT Developer should be played with the same version of ADRIFT Runner — but ADRIFT Runner 5 should be able to run adventures created for v4:

  • ADRIFT 5.0 (2011–)
  • ADRIFT 4.0 (2002–2012)
  • ADRIFT 3.9 (2001)
  • ADRIFT 2.0 (aka Adventure Generator, 1997) — legacy 16-bit DOS app

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Suggested GitHub topics:
adrift
adrift5
adrift-5

For more information, see also:

Adventuron

A free to use, proprietary (closed source) in-browser text adventure and gamebook authoring tool, by Adventuron Software Limited, UK.

Aiee!

Aiee! is a cross-platform tool (Java) for creating and playing text adventures, or “interactive fiction”. Aiee! adventures are written in a simple XML-based format, without the need for any programming experience. Aiee! adventures can even include illustrations and sound.

Alan

Alan (Adventure LANguage) is an a cross-platform open source authoring system based on a dedicated IF language with an English-like syntax, intended to simplify writing adventures for non-programmers. Its webiste also offers a dedicated IDE and other useful tools to aid IF authoring.

Alan was created in 1985 by Thomas Nilsson (now Thomas Nilefalk) and Göran Forslund, and is actively maintained by Thomas Nilefalk. The latest version is Alan 3.

💡

Suggested GitHub topics:
alan-if
alan3

For more information, see also:

  • Alan Wiki — official Alan Wiki, publicly editable.
  • IFWiki » Alan

Source repository:

  • github.com/alan-if/alan

Libraries for Alan 3:

  • github.com/AnssiR66/AlanStdLib — Alan Standard Library v2, by Anssi Räisänen.
  • ALAN Library v0.6.2 (at Alan Goodies) — an earlier library ported from Alan 2, still working with current Alan version, but today mainly used to compile legacy adventures and tutorials. Deprecated in favour of the new StdLib v2.
  • github.com/alan-if/alan-i18n — The ALAN Internationalization Project, multi-language translations of a basic ALAN IF library to create text adventures in different languages, and provide reference implementations to add support for new locales.

Alan in other languages:

  • github.com/tajmone/Alan3-Italian — Italian translation of the Alan StdLib 2, by Tristano Ajmone (incomplete Alpha).
  • Alan Spanish — the pALANte library, by Bruce Humphrey and Marcos Donnantuoni.

Books and tutorials:

  • git.io/alan-docs — The official Alan Documentation website, offering various books, guides and tutorials for on-line consultation and download:

    • The Alan Manual — on-line version of the latest ALAN Adventure Language Reference Manual.
    • Alan Cookbook v2 — Anssi Räisänen’s collection of tips and tricks on how to implement and achieve various effects in the ALAN language or using the Standard Library v2.
    • Alan 3 Beginner’s Guide — Michael Arnaud’s step-by-step tutorial for the creation of the TV TIME! adventure using ALAN Library v0.6.1.
    • Alan IDE Reference Guide — Robert DeFord’s guide on how to install, configure and use the Alan IDE to craft text adventure in ALAN.

Alan editors, IDEs and editor extensions:

  • AlanIDE — complete Alan Integrated Development Environment, by Alan author Thomas Nilefalk. In Java/Eclipse.
  • Sublime Alan IF — Alan 3 syntax for Sublime Text 4 (usable Alpha).

Syntax highlighters supporting Alan:

  • Highlight — natively (see: alan.lang definition file).
  • Highlight.js — via external syntax definition for Alan.
  • XSLTHL — via external syntax definition for Alan.

Alan-related projects:

  • github.com/alan-if/alan-docs — Alan IF Documentation Project.
  • github.com/alan-if/alan-by-examples — Learn ALAN IF through examples.
  • github.com/alan-if/alan-repository-template — GitHub repository template for Alan IF projects.
  • github.com/alan-if/alan-goodies — “Alan Goodies”, a collection of assorted Alan IF assets.
  • github.com/alan-if/alan-xsl-fopub — DocBook XSL Template for Alan PDF documentation via Asciidoctor-fopub; includes an XSLTHL Alan definition for Syntax Highlighting.

Curveship

Hugo

The Hugo Interactive Fiction Development System (1995-2006), created by Kent Tessman, is a cross-platform, free and open source (BSD-2-Clause license) programming language and set of tools for authoring and playing Interactive Fiction adventures, supporting images, sound and videos.
The latest official Hugo release is v3.1.03 (2005).

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Suggested GitHub topics:
hugo-if

For more information, see also:

Hugo official documentation, by Kent Tessman:

  • The Hugo Book (PDF) — at the IF Archive (direct download).
  • The Hugo Book (HTML) — New AsciiDoc port and HTML edition, revised with Kent Tessman supervision, Jan. 2020.

Tutorials and learning resources:

The Hugo Library, by Kent Tessman:

  • Hugo Library (v3.1.03.1) — at the IF Archive.
  • Hugo Library (v3.1.03.2) — on GitHub (care of Tristano Ajmone).

Third party libraries for Hugo:
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