AccessiIf

AccessiIf is a free Windows program for playing and creating interactive fiction.

If you remember a program on Nathan Tech called AccessiFrotz, this is it after a fairly substantial growth spurt. AccessiFrotz began as a straightforward interface for playing Z-machine games through Frotz. It now supports more game systems, online catalogues, richer game interfaces, sound, creation tools, gamebooks, testing tools and considerably more besides. The old name had become a little too small for the job, so from version 2.0 the program is called AccessiIf.

You can use AccessiIf purely as a player and never touch the creation tools. Or you can open the Creator and make something of your own. No creative ambitions are required. Sometimes you just want to get eaten by a grue in peace.

What is interactive fiction?

Interactive fiction, often shortened to IF, is a broad family of stories and games in which the reader or player takes part in what happens.

In a traditional parser-based text adventure, the game describes the current situation and you type commands such as:

LOOK
NORTH
TAKE LANTERN
EXAMINE DOOR
UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY
ASK GARY ABOUT THE SUSPICIOUS PARCEL

The parser interprets those commands and the story responds. The result can be anything from a short puzzle game to an enormous world containing exploration, conversation, mysteries, comedy, horror and the occasional object which seemed completely useless until approximately six hours after you dropped it.

AccessiIf also includes a choice-based gamebook system. Instead of typing commands, the reader moves through passages by selecting choices. Gamebooks created in AccessiIf can be exported as HTML and played in an ordinary web browser.

Playing games with AccessiIf

AccessiIf supports several major interactive-fiction formats, including:

• Z-machine / Z-Code, the format associated with classic Infocom games and widely used by Inform authors.
• Glulx, a newer interactive-fiction virtual machine designed for larger and more capable games.
• TADS 2 and TADS 3, two generations of the long-running TADS interactive-fiction system.
• Blorb-packaged games, where a story and resources such as sound can be bundled together.

You can open a supported game you already have, or browse AccessiIf's built-in game catalogues.

The catalogues cover Z-machine, Glulx and TADS games and are updated from Nathan Tech's AccessiIf catalogue files. Individual games are normally downloaded from their original hosting location, commonly the IF Archive. An internet connection is therefore required for catalogue updates and downloads, but games stored on your computer are played locally.

The game window

AccessiIf keeps the actual playing interface deliberately straightforward. Depending on what the game provides, the window can contain:

• A command input where you type parser commands.
• The main game output or transcript.
• A status and auxiliary area for information such as room name, score, moves, time, menus, maps or other material supplied separately by the game.
• A choices area when a game provides selectable choices or hyperlinks.

You can use F6 and Shift+F6 to move between the major areas of the game window. Areas which are not currently being used are skipped.

Useful playing keystrokes

• Ctrl+O - open a game.
• Ctrl+Q - quit the current game and return to the AccessiIf home screen.
• Ctrl+S - ask the current game to save.
• Ctrl+R - restore a saved position.
• Ctrl+Z - undo the previous turn, where supported.
• Ctrl+T - save the transcript.
• Ctrl+F - search the transcript.
• F6 / Shift+F6 - move between the major game areas.
• Alt+Enter - open the Command Palette.
• Escape - interrupt current speech.
• Ctrl+0 through Ctrl+9 - repeat recent stored output.
• Shift+F1 - show game-window keystroke help.

The command input also keeps a history, so Up Arrow and Down Arrow can revisit commands you have already entered.

Sound and richer game interfaces

Where a game and its format support them, AccessiIf can handle audio and information outside the ordinary scrolling transcript.

This matters particularly for games which use status windows, menus, hyperlinks, secondary text windows or other features which do not fit the old model of one input box and one output box.

Not every game uses these features, of course. Some adventures remain perfectly content to give you a room, a lamp and an unreasonable number of locked doors.

Creating your own interactive fiction

AccessiIf 2.0 includes the Creator, an authoring environment for making both parser-based text adventures and choice-based gamebooks.

The Creator is intended to handle common authoring jobs through structured dialogs and menus rather than requiring you to begin by learning an entire programming language.

Parser games

Parser projects are traditional text adventures in which the player types commands. AccessiIf uses an Inform toolchain underneath the Creator.

The Creator includes tools for building and managing things such as:

• Rooms and room descriptions.
• Connections between rooms.
• Standard and custom directions.
• Objects.
• Doors and regions.
• Characters.
• Conversation topics.
• Custom verbs and actions.
• Variables.
• Puzzles.
• Story logic and events.
• Quests.
• Win and loss conditions.

You can view the generated Inform source when you want to inspect what the Creator has produced or investigate a compiler problem, but it does not need to dominate the ordinary editing interface.

Parser projects can be built and played directly from the Creator. Supported output targets include Z-machine and Glulx.

Choice-based gamebooks

The gamebook Creator takes a different approach. A story is built from passages connected by choices.

It supports considerably more than simple "choose A or B" branching, including:

• Normal, checkpoint and automatic passages.
• Win and loss endings.
• Normal choices.
• Random choices with percentage-based destinations.
• Variables and visible player statistics.
• Inventory items.
• Conditional passages and choices.
• Effects which change variables or inventory.
• Visited-passage conditions.
• Dice and statistic checks.
• Once-only choices.
• Replacement choices.
• Return-to-previous-passage choices.
• Passage duplication.
• Incoming-link inspection.
• Broken-link and structural checking.
• Browser-based save and load.
• Undo and restart controls.
• Reader display settings.
• Headers and footers.
• An optional external stylesheet which can override the built-in presentation.

Finished gamebooks are exported as HTML. They can be opened in a normal browser without requiring AccessiIf to play them.

Story Health and testing

The Creator includes Story Health, a preflight checker intended to catch structural problems before release.

For gamebooks this can include missing destinations, unreachable passages, broken references, invalid random routing and passages which have nowhere to go. Parser projects can also be checked for Creator-level structural problems before or alongside compilation.

Story Health is useful, but it is not psychic. You should still play what you make, deliberately take wrong routes, use objects in the wrong order and generally behave like the sort of player authors secretly fear.

Guides and documentation

AccessiIf includes detailed HTML guides with the program rather than expecting this web page to become a small novel.

The installed guides cover:

• How to Play Text Adventures - parser commands, movement, inventory, conversation, saving, status information, transcript tools and game-window keystrokes.
• Build Your First Gamebook - passages, choices, variables, inventory, conditions, effects, random routes, Story Health and HTML releases.
• Build Your First Text Adventure - rooms, directions, objects, characters, verbs, puzzles, story logic, Inform builds and testing.

The installer places shortcuts to these guides in the AccessiIf Guides folder in the Start Menu.

Portable or installed?

AccessiIf is available as both an installable application and a portable package.

The installed version integrates with the normal Windows installation and Start Menu setup.

The portable version is intended for people who want AccessiIf and its managed data kept together rather than installed conventionally.

Whichever version you choose, keep backups of stories and Creator projects you care about. No software feature has yet improved upon the emotional clarity produced by discovering your only copy of a project was on the drive which just died.

Licensing

AccessiIf itself is distributed under the terms supplied with the program. It also includes or works with third-party interactive-fiction engines, tools and libraries which remain subject to their own licences.

The distribution includes a licences folder containing the AccessiIf EULA and applicable third-party licence material.

Games found through the catalogues remain the work of their respective authors and publishers. AccessiIf does not acquire ownership of a game merely because it can catalogue, download or play it.

A little history

The original AccessiFrotz was deliberately much smaller. It concentrated on playing Z-machine games using Frotz while presenting the game through the interface Nathan Tech wanted.

Then came catalogues. Then more formats. Then Glulx. Then TADS. Then richer status information. Then creation tools. Then an entire gamebook system wandered in and apparently lives here now.

By version 2.0, calling the whole thing AccessiFrotz no longer described what it actually was. AccessiIf keeps the history while giving the program enough room to be more than one interpreter.

Other resources

• Frotz
• The IF Archive
• Z-machine games on the IF Archive
• Glulx games on the IF Archive
• Inform

Download AccessiIf

Ready to play something strange, make something stranger, or spend twenty minutes examining a spoon because the author described it with suspicious enthusiasm?