Something really interesting has happened this month -

Inform7 is a natural language based programming language that really closely resembles english.

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Welcome.html

for instance - in the tutorial you can quite quickly create this code

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/doc5.html



"Midsummer Day"

The Gazebo is a room. "A white canvas parasol raised up on stakes driven into the grass."
The wood-slatted crate is in the Gazebo. The crate is a container.
Mr Jones wears a top hat. The crate contains a croquet mallet.
Instead of taking the crate, say "It's far too heavy to lift."
Mr Jones is in the Gazebo.


and then running it will provide you with the following output:


Midsummer Day
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 080425 / Inform 7 build 5J39 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/11N) SD

Gazebo
A white canvas parasol raised up on stakes driven into the grass.

You can see a wood-slatted crate (in which is a croquet mallet) and Mr Jones here.

>look at crate
In the wood-slatted crate is a croquet mallet.

>take mallet
Taken.

>stand on crate
That's not something you can stand on.

>inventory
You are carrying:
a croquet mallet

>put mallet in crate
You put the croquet mallet into the wood-slatted crate.

>take crate
It's far too heavy to lift.

>inventory
You are carrying nothing.

>take all
wood-slatted crate: It's far too heavy to lift.
Mr Jones: I don't suppose Mr Jones would care for that.
croquet mallet: Taken.

>examine Mr Jones
You see nothing special about Mr Jones.

>look at Mr Jones
You see nothing special about Mr Jones.

>look at hat
You see nothing special about the top hat.



Anyway, the point is that all the objects in the world know how to behave (at least in a generic way) because they actually inherit their properties and methods from a vast library of generic objects. We know that if a crate is a kind of container it can contain things, whereas if you were to try to


>put mallet into Mr Jones
He can't contain things.

>


The game knew that without a single line of code added to the example. You can of course add and extend the classes to create new and unique objects with distinct personalities.

What is more, the inform7 compiler can infer all this and extend classes and instantiate objects from this limited version of english that it speaks.

OK, now what is the big news?

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/5f4989d44b6775b4

This post from April 2008 now announces the launch of Guncho - an inform7 multiplayer environment which is free for all to use.

http://www.guncho.com/

Anyway, you can quickly and easily create online worlds using the inform toolkit that will run on windows, mac and linux and then everyone can play them using a standard MUD client

Windows users, try MUSHclient.
Mac users, try Atlantis.
Unix users, try TinyFugue.

Installation of Inform7 and the reader clients on Mac and Windows is dead easy. I'm going to try installing it on Xandros tonight. I'll probably have to install the command line linux version of inform7 and also some kind of frotz to do offline testing.

There's also a guncho offline mode for testing available

http://www.guncho.com/guncho_mockup.zip

You can also restrict worlds to certain users if you want to do testing.

I think that the speed and lightweight nature of this world builder could make it an excellent way to test out story ideas for games before committing to a 3d build on something like secondlife.

Also, since it is based on Inform7 and therefore has all the power of the inform libraries you can potentially create the compelling characters and storylines present in the best interactive fiction.

Finally as a teaching tool, will be a insanely quick way to create scenario based training simulations that help people do computer aided learning.