A Tale of Two Informs
This reference is written from the perspective of an author working with Inform 10.1.2, which is, at the time of this writing, the most recent release. For reasons beyond the scope of this work, other authors continue to use Inform “9” or, more accurately and less apprehensibly, 6M62.
This seldom matters to Bisquixe users. There are two different “Simple Multimedia Effects” extensions, one for each version of Inform, but we authors use them in the exact same ways. We use the same phrases, and the format for specifying values is no different from version to version. Every line of code shared in this reference works identically, whether we use version 9 or 10. This is a version-agnostic guide.
However, discussion of in-game images will naturally lead many to thoughts of page layout. Perhaps the author would like to present images in a separate window while maintaining text input and output inside a large “main” window. Older readers of this guide will remember that many commercial games of the 1980s were organized in this way.
Authors planning their projects ought to know that Inform 9 supports this sort of screen division via an extension called “Flexible Windows.” Inform 10, on the other hand, has no such capacity. This feature will be restored in Inform 11, but there is no established timeline for releasing the next version of Inform. If we wish to create an Inform project with multiple windows now, our only choice is Inform 9.
The use of Flexible Windows is a topic beyond the scope of this guide, but it is only appropriate to advise readers of the options before them. Authors should carefully consider their design goals before committing to a version of Inform.
This reference will discuss images within the primary, default window for an Inform web project, the .BufferWindow, but general concepts will apply to images printed anywhere.