Contents

1. Introduction
2. Typographical Conventions
3. Installation
   1. Compilation
   2. Playing the Sample Games
4. Playing Interactive Fiction
   1. Moving Around
   2. Manipulating Objects
   3. Interacting with Characters
   4. Meta Commands
5. Tutorial Game
   1. Language Syntax
   2. Program Structure
   3. Getting Started
   4. Locations
   5. The Player
   6. Some Introductory Text
   7. Objects
   8. Verbs and Functions
   9. Overriding Functions
   10. Doors
   11. Non-player Characters
   12. The Passing of Time
   13. Winning and Losing the Game
6. Testing and Debugging
   1. The WALKTHRU Command
   2. The DEBUG Command
   3. The INSPECT Command
   4. The Verb FETCH
   5. Transcripts
7. Screen Display
   1. The WRITE Command
      1. Special Characters
      2. Printing the Value of Variables
      3. Printing the Value of Item Elements
      4. Printing the Names and descriptions of Objects
      5. Sentences Referring to Varying Objects
      6. Printing the Value of String Constants
   2. The PRINT Command
   3. The LOOK Command
   4. The MORE Command
8. Glk and Multimedia
   1. Blorb Files and BLC
   2. The IMAGE Command
   3. The SOUND Command
   4. The VOLUME Command
   5. The STOP Command
   6. The TIMER Command
   7. The STYLE Command
   8. The Status Window
   9. The UPDATESTATUS Command
9. Flow Control
   1. The IF, IFALL, ENDIF and ENDALL Commands
   2. The IFSTRING Command
   3. The ELSE Command
   4. The LOOP and ENDLOOP Commands
   5. The REPEAT and UNTIL Commands
   6. The WHILE and ENDWHILE Commands
   7. The RETURN Command
10. Changing Data
    1. The SET Command
    2. Type Casting
    3. The SETSTRING Command
11. Movement
    1. The MOVE Command
    2. The TRAVEL Command
    3. Moving Non-player Characters
12. Special-Purpose Commands
    1. The POINTS Command
    2. The PROXY Command
    3. Trigonometry
       1. The POSITION Command
       2. The BEARING Command
       3. The DISTANCE Command
    4. The ASKNUMBER and GETNUMBER Commands
    5. The GETYESORNO Command
13. Attributes
    1. The ENSURE Command
    2. Object Attributes
    3. Location Attributes
    4. User Attributes
14. Functions
    1. Function names and the EXECUTE Command
       1. Passing Arguments to a Function
    2. The function-call count
    3. The RETURN Command
    4. Responding to the Player's Moves
    5. Special Functions
    6. Utility Functions
15. Creating New Verbs
16. Pointers
    1. Object Pointers
    2. Location Pointers
17. Object Resolution
18. Definitions in Detail
    1. Objects
    2. Locations
    3. Integer Variables
       1. Internal Integer Variables
    4. String Variables
    5. Arrays
    6. Constants
    7. Synonyms
    8. Filters
    9. Grammar Statements
    10. User Attributes
19. Internals
    1. Constants and Random
    2. Internal Commands
20. Appendix A: JACL Attributes
21. Appendix B: Library Verb Functions
22. Appendix C: Tutorial Game Source Code
23. Glossary