Inform 7 has continued to evolve since the book’s release. Here are updates to the text to bring it in line with the current version, as well as all known mistakes and errata.

Updates to Sand-dancer source text

  • Chapter 5, p. 133 (Part – Setting, Chapter – Office Interior, Section – Staging Area): The rule “Before switching on flashlight in dim Staging Area” should be altered to Before switching on flashlight when Staging Area is dim. (This accounts for the player first turning on the flashlight elsewhere.)
  • Chapter 6, p. 168 (Part – Setting, Chapter – Office Interior, Section – Storage Room): The condition on the final rule about the canned oranges that says “You won’t be hungry again…” should be updated to read Instead of taking cans of food when can opener is handled and canned oranges are handled:
  • Chapter 9, p. 292 (Part – Characters, Chapter – Trading with the Spirit Animals): the source phrase beginning Check trading when trader needs more memories should be appended with and the trader is not Sand-dancer, as a temporary workaround to address a bug in this Inform release.
  • Chapter 9, p. 293 (Part – Characters, Chapter – Trading with the Spirit Animals): After Carry out trading, insert the line now the noun is held by the trader;
  • Chapter 9, p. 299 (Part – Scenes, Chapter – Rabbit’s Offer): To prevent a bug where the end of the Rabbit’s Offer scene can get derailed with unexpected input, add the following rule to this section: Instead of trading or quizzing or informing or saying yes or saying no or saying hello to when lookup-suggestion is familiar, say "'Look up, Naki,' he says again."
  • Chapter 10, p. 332 (Part – Mechanics, Chapter – Memories, Section – Memory Collection): The code extract beginning The ultrasound suggests should be changed to The ultrasound of Ocean's baby suggests
  • Chapter 11, p. 376 (Part – Mechanics, Chapter – Smoking): In the book text under “Extended Hints,” each of the “say” statements should instead be “decide on” statements.
  • Chapter 11, p. 381 (Part – Mechanics, Chapter – Memories): In the first line of the “To decide whether insufficient memories found” phrase, the words in the second line of code is less than the price of Hare should instead read is less than the price of the rabbit.
  • Chapter 11, p.382 (Part – Scenes, Chapter – Sand-dancer’s Arrival): After the change to the code block beginning “Sand-dancer’s Arrival begins when…” you must make a second change to the source text. The instead rule in the previous paragraph, triggering this scene when the player needs to leave the building, also needs the condition added to the above rule. It should read in full: Instead of leaving the building when time for arrival and not insufficient memories found:

Updates for Inform build 6G60 (December ’10)

  • Chapter 3, p. 67: The sentence beginning “Names are abbreviated…” should be replaced with ‘Names are abbreviated, so Crumbling Concrete has the label “CC.”‘
  • Chapter 3, p.68: At the end of the sentence beginning “The small orange arrows will jump…” add “, while the plus sign will reveal its details and further links to where those are defined.”
  • Chapter 5, p.126: Before the sentence beginning “Below this is a list of all…” should be inserted three things:
    • A header called “Tokens”
    • A paragraph: “When we learn how to define new actions, we’ll need to know how to specify what sort and number of nouns an action can take. The action index contains a list of these tokens, including any new ones defined by extensions or your source text.”
    • A header called “Actions A to Z”
  • Chapter 10, p.328: The first paragraph should be changed to “The Rules Index shows all the rules in your story, divided into categories and subcategories and roughly ordered by their interest level to average authors. Some of these categories concern fundamental aspects of the simulation of a story world, and don’t need to be worried about; but try opening some of these categories to get a look at the ugly details beneath an Inform story (no offense, enable Glulx acceleration rule). Grayed-out rulebooks are empty, but all others can be expanded with the “plus” icon to show details and a full list of every rule in that rulebook.”
  • Chapter 10, p.328: The paragraph beginning “How actions are processed” should be replaced with “The first set of rules listed relate to actions, and include all of the custom action exception rules (before, instead, and after) defined in your story, as well as rules related to actions taken by non-player characters. The contents of the action default rulebooks (check, carry out, and report) can be found in their own tab, called Actions.”
  • Chapter 10, p.328: The phrase “On all the category pages of the Rules Index, each rulebook or activity receives its own” should be changed to “After clicking on a rulebook to expand it, you’ll see a”.

Errata and Updates

  • Acknowledgments, p.vii: Kevin Jackson-Mead’s name is misspelled. (It’s because I didn’t have you proofread this page, Kevin!)
  • Chapter 3, p. 52: in the Tip box, the clause after the colon should read “see the section on “Plural Things” in Chapter 10 for more about this.”
  • Chapter 3, p. 53: The paragraph beginning “Another thing we…” should be changed to read “Another undescribed thing we might create is the electrical tower in our Base of the Tower room:”
  • Chapter 3, p. 53: In the Lit/Unlit section, the phrase “including the room itself” should be struck: rooms have a separate property, lighted/dark.
  • Chapter 3, p. 57: In the Caution box at the bottom of the page, the phrase “you can’t put a container inside” should read “you can’t put a container inside itself”.
  • Chapter 3, p. 64: the table header “Rxample Relation” should be “Example Relation.”
  • Chapter 5, p.75: The phrase “explains the single connection from this room” should be changed to “explains the most important connection from this room”.
  • Chapter 6, p.162: The reference to the Poor Man’s Mistype extension should note that it requires Smarter Parser.
  • Chapter 6, p.163: The text in the first paragraph should be updated to introduce the GONEAR test command, which should be used to move the player character instead of ABSTRACT.
  • Chapter 8, p. 223: “decades have past” should be “passed”
  • Chapter 8, p. 227: In the last paragraph, replace the phrase “fight against and enemies” with “fight against enemies”.
  • Chapter 8, p.253: Missing period after “culprit.”
  • Chapter 8, p. 258: Missing a closing quote on the last line of code in Exercise 8.3.
  • Chapter 10, p. 316: A new paragraph should be added at the end of the “Printing Room Description Details of Something” section, reading “Note that parenthetical clauses listing the contents of containers or supporters are handled by a different activity: look up ‘omit contents in listing’ in the official documentation for more on this.”
  • Chapter 10, p.320: In the sentence “Default Messages defines the [\n] text substitution” the substitution should be [/n] instead.
  • Chapter 10, p.325: The old standard “You can’t seen any such thing” should in fact be “see” any such thing.
  • Chapter 10, p.327: The sentence beginning “The last tab of the Index panel…” should be changed to read “The last tab of the Index panel to be introduced is the Rules Index, which offers…” (rest follows as printed).
  • Chapter 11, p.372: Missing period after “advance” (last word on page).
  • Back Cover: The back cover blurb contains the phrase “and requires no programming skills.” This should instead read “and requires no previous programming skill to learn.”