What is this?
-------------

This is the source code to "Lobsters on a Plane", an interactive
fiction game (or more commonly known as "text adventure".)

It was originally written by Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman on
March 27, 2010.  The code is now released under the "Creative Commons
Attribution - Noncommercial - Share Alike 3.0" license, which you can
find in the LICENSE file.

The game is written in the Inform 7 programming language.  You can
download the compiler and IDE as a single package from here:

  http://www.inform7.com


[
When compiled, the source code produces a bytecode file which can be
executed on any implementation of a Z machine interpreter; we
typically tell Inform to compile it to a .z8 file.
]

OR

[
When compiled, the source code produces a bytecode file which can be
executed on any implementation of a Glulx virtual machine:

  http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/
]

The game's source code lives in a single file called 'story.ni'.



To build the game:
------------------

1. Create a working Inform project from your source tree:

  $ git clone URL
  $ cd XXX
  $ mv XXX.inform/ temp.inform/

  [...launch Inform, create new project in this dir called 'XXX'...]

  $ cp temp.inform/Source/story.ni XXX.inform/Source/
  $ cp temp.inform/uuid.txt XXX.inform/
  $ rm -rf temp.inform/


2. Copy the included .i7x files to wherever the Inform environment
expects to find extension modules:

  - on Mac, this is usually ~/Library/Inform/Extensions/.  On Windows
    or Linux, the location will be slightly different.  We'll let you
    figure it out.

  - create a directory called "David Fisher" in the Extensions
    directory, then copy 'Default Messages.i7x' into it.

  - [add instructions for other .i7x extensions here]


3. Launch the Inform IDE and load the XXX.inform project.  The
source code should be visible, and it should compile fine.  [Make sure
that Inform's settings are are set to "Glulx" as the target VM.]


WARNING!!

  ** DO NOT do any version control operations (commit, update, push,
      pull) while the Inform IDE is still open.  When the IDE 'saves',
      it destroys and recreates the whole XXX.inform/ directory, thus
      possibly eradicating any changes you may have downloaded.  ***