Inform 7 multiple authors

Hello all,

I’m looking to write an IF game concurrently with my wife and am wondering if anyone has tried using writing an Inform 7 project with another author. I was thinking of dividing the work by chapter maybe. Is there a way to work on the same project from multiple computers? Then, maybe merge the final project somehow?

Thanks,
MountainGeek

With a small bit of trickery, you can get inform projects working with the various version control systems such as Mercurial, Git, and so on. This would allow you to share the project as you wish, among other nice features. These sort of systems can be complex and do have a learning curve, so beware of that.

The manual (but generally easier) approach would be using a text file difference/merging program and handling the process yourself. How difficult and time consuming it can be depends on how well you both avoid conflicts.

I’m sure there are other solutions, but the above two are the safest methods that come to mind off the top of my head right now.

If you’re going to be working on different sections (rather than coding the same section at the same time) you can make a main file like this…

Include Chapter I by John Doe.
Include Chapter II by Jane Doe.
Include Chapter III by John Doe.
[etc.]

…then write your code in separate extensions. I would definitely recommend using version control as well, however, in case of compatibility problems between new versions of your extensions.

Thank you both for your answers. Version control is a good idea and splitting by extensions as if they were subroutines is brilliant.

I’ll have to think about version control and it’s funny I didn’t earlier since Inform is really a programming language and I wouldn’t think of writing code without it. I may go with something like drop box since it is so document like and we both have drop box accounts.

Thanks again,
Mountaingeek