Special Features in Glulx

In Chapter 23 of Writing with Inform, “Figures, Sounds and Files,” you’ll find a good discussion of how to add graphics files (digital photos or clip art in .jpg or .png format) to your game. To do so, you’ll need to compile to glulx, not to .z8.

Displaying graphics in a game can be a good way to give the game an extra dimension — but not all IF interpreters will display graphics. Some interpreters are text-only. In addition, some IF players are blind or visually impaired. One of the reasons these folks like IF is because they can play the games using screen-reader software. For these reasons, it’s probably not a good idea to write a puzzle in such a way that an essential clue is found only in a graphic image. Think of graphics as enhancements.

The same chapter in the Documentation also discusses including sound files briefly. But again, you’ll be at the mercy of the interpreter the player happens to be using. Support for sound playback in IF is generally not too reliable, so I’d suggest not worrying too much about this feature.

The glulx game format also supports opening several windows at once within the interpreter’s main window. With this feature, you could display graphics in one sub-window and have the text game running in another sub-window. Instructions on how to use this feature are beyond the scope of this Handbook.

The current version of the Glulx specification is very limited when it comes to text styles. Emily Short’s extension Glulx Text Effects does a nice job of illustrating what’s possible.