Sharing useful source text with other writers is part of the collaborative culture of IF, and Inform recognises this by providing facilities for writing and using extensions: they also contain documentation and, in many cases, examples of usage.

Extensions are supported by their authors, rather than by the authors of Inform proper.

Provides a range of convenient say phrases, including more varieties of number-printing, descriptions of object locations, and descriptions of which members of a set conform to a criterion (such as "Three of them are closed." when speaking of a group of doors). Compatible with 5G67, but not with earlier versions of Inform.

 

A flexible list-builder that allows listed items to be put in a specific order or delimited in a new way. (Particularly useful for writing lists of the form "X, Y, or Z" instead of "X, Y, and Z".)

 

Correctly placing double quotes, commas, periods, and spacing is a tricky and tedious problem for dialogue-heavy games whose characters' lines span multiple rules and say phrases. This extension provides say phrases that automate the process.

 

Provides a means of using tables as shuffled, cyclic or stop lists.

 

Provides a means of using tables as shuffled, cyclic or stopping lists. This is an alternative to List Control that uses list controller objects instead of a Table of Table Types.

 

Provides a way to ensure that a piece of text will only be printed once, or to have it appear differently the first time it's printed. (Officially withdrawn by the author now that there are text substitutions which handle this; we leave it on the website for people still using older versions of Inform.)

 

Specify rules to modify any and all game output. Recommended usage is solving capitalization, punctuation, and whitespace issues. Includes Eric Eve's Text Capture. (Updated for 5T18.)

 

Provides a number of helping say phrases to deal with inflections for singular and plural nouns; provides some control over pronoun usage.

 

Allows the capture of text that would otherwise be output to the screen, so that the text can be further manipulated, displayed at some other point, or simply discarded.

 

Provides the ability to vary say statements inline, either randomly or sequentially. (This ability is built into Inform as of 4X60, but the extension remains for people who would like to use it with older versions of Inform.)

 

Provides phrases for checking and setting the current value of a particular pronoun. Integrates well with Eric Eve's Conversation Framework.

 

Offers specialized commands to strip troublesome punctuation such as periods, commas, question marks, and quote marks out of the player's typed commands; provides a converter to especially interpret titles that contain full stops, such as "Mrs." or "Dr.". This extension is less necessary as of 5G67, but may still be more time and space-efficient than using regular expressions on the player's command, and is in any case provided in support of older code.

 

Some functions for setting and use of snippets (parts of the player's command). (Minor update for compatibility with 4W37.)

 

Gives objects the ability to store messages which can be manipulated with more flexibility than regular text values. Includes an example in which the player can write messages in a notebook. (Incompatible past 5T18, but unnecessary given that Inform now has indexed text; we leave it on the website for people still using older versions of Inform.)

 

Adds multiple randomized exits to a direction, so that going that direction will select one of several outcomes by chance. Requires Shipboard Directions, also by Mikael Segercrantz. Updated for 5T18.

 

Provides for environments in which the player's actions are quickly and easily restricted.

 

Provides routines for moving NPCs intelligently in the 2D grid created by Room & Dimension.

 

An extension to allow rules for determining the presence of backdrops. (Functions only with versions of Inform prior to 5T18; however, from 5T18 Inform is able to do this natively. See the section on Moving Backdrops in the Changes chapter.)

 

Provides actions to face a direction, look toward a named room, or look through a named door. Version 5 updates for easier text replacement. (Updated for 5T18.)

 

A simple extension providing for things out of reach.

 

Adds a 2D grid representation of a room.

 

Allows for doors that are implemented as having independent 'faces' -- to put a knocker on that can only be seen from on side, for instance, or to allow the player to lock one side with a key but the other with a latch. Also introduces a 'latched door' kind. Requires Plurality and Locksmith.

 

Doors and switches that cannot be acted upon until they are discovered.

 

A table-based way to add atmospheric effects to rooms and regions. Upgraded for 5T18.

 

Simulates a changing date, day/night cycle, randomized pseudo-weather, and semi-accurate moon phase. (Given a tiny update to compile with 5T18.)

 

Requires Atmospheric Effects and Weather. This extension creates scenes based upon the settings produced by the Weather extension for ease of use with Atmospheric Effects's scene mechanism. The number of scenes created by Weather Effects is enough for the game not to fit in the Z-Machine, so this extension is Glulx only. Updated to work with 5T18.

 

Some additional ways of dealing with the standard times and timers.

 

Provides a system for tracking events which have occured, and testing how recently they occured. Also includes some simple phrases for comparing times.

 

This extension allows activities to be scheduled at absolute and relative times. These activities may later be checked or cancelled. The advantage of this over the standard events is that activities may take a variable, and the same activity may be scheduled multiple times. Rudimentary support is also provided for grouping output of multiple activities scheduled for the same turn. (Updated for 5T18.)

 

Keeps track of what the player knows and has seen. (Updated for 5T18.)

 

Allows the player to ask who and what things or people are within the game. Version 5 updates for compatibility with 5G67.

 

Appends a list of exit directions and names any previously visited rooms at the end of a room description.

 

Identical to Exit Descriptions, but in Spanish.

 

An EXITS command and a listing of exits after room descriptions. (Not to be confused with Exit Lister by Eric Eve, which puts a listing of exits into the status line.)

 

Based on Exit Lister by Andre Kosmos, Gavin Lambert's edition reworks the internal design and provides more options for controlling lists in dark rooms.

 

Introductions provides an introductory paragraph about objects in a room description the first time the player looks in that location. It also allows the author to add segue text that will appear between one description and the next. It works on its own or in combination with Tailored Room Description or Ordinary Room Description.