idewindows-11inform7

Inform 7 (10.1.2.20220830 on Windows 11) does not show story


I recently returned to Inform 7 (Inform for Windows 10.1.2.20220830) and I found now my project does not show the story. So I downloaded Inform again and tested with new simple project from documentation:

"Midsummer Day"

The Gazebo is a room. "A white canvas parasol raised up on stakes driven into the grass."

Project seems to compile correctly

The 19-word source text has successfully been translated into a world with 1 room and 1 thing, and the index has been brought up to date.

but Story tab is showing nothing - no output is written, I cannot enter commands and Stop button is disabled:

Empty story tab in Inform IDE

I am not sure what could be the issue because I did not used it for a year, maybe some update spoiled it or maybe I did just forgot something basic. Now that I think about it it could be because of update to Windows 11? Release mentions Windows 10 specifically.

Compilation console prints:

C:\Program Files\Inform\Compilers\inform7 \
    -internal "C:\Program Files\Inform\Internal" -external "C:\Users\pipik\Documents\Inform" -project "C:\work\InformWorkspace\TestIf7Go.inform" -format=Inform6/32d
Inform 7 v10.1.2 has started.
I've now read your source text, which is 19 words long.
I've also read Basic Inform by Graham Nelson, which is 7691 words long.
I've also read English Language by Graham Nelson, which is 2328 words long.
I've also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 32164 words long.

  The 19-word source text has successfully been translated. There were 1 room
    and 1 thing.
Inform 7 has finished.

C:\Program Files\Inform\Compilers\inform6 \
    -wSDGk +include_path=..\Source,.\ auto.inf output.ulx
Inform 6.41 for Win32 (22nd July 2022)
In:  1 source code files             94411 syntactic lines
 81050 textual lines               2393050 characters (ISO 8859-1 Latin1)
Allocated:
  8772 symbols                     9296145 bytes of memory
Out:   Glulx story file 1.230829 (554K long):
    20 classes                          38 objects
   233 global vars                   85774 variable/array space
    96 verbs                           314 dictionary entries
   179 grammar lines (version 2)       251 grammar tokens (unlimited)
   101 actions                          37 attributes (maximum 56)
    39 common props (maximum 253)       18 individual props (unlimited)
464431 bytes of code                109599 unused bytes stripped out (23.6%)
132746 characters used in text      103538 bytes compressed (rate 0.779)
     0 abbreviations (maximum 64)     3231 routines (unlimited)
 80964 instructions of code          45732 sequence points
108288 bytes writable memory used   458496 bytes read-only memory used
566784 bytes used in machine    1073175040 bytes free in machine
Compiled with 3237 suppressed warnings
Completed in 1.00 seconds

Compiler finished with code 0

Since I suspect change to Windows 11 to be the issue, I did run Inform.exe with compatibility to Windows 8/7/Vista but this did not resolve the issue. Also I inserted some commands in testing tab:

Commands in testing tab

and tried "Play all" and also "Play to here" but story tab remained same.

As I said this was tested with reinstalled IDE and new sample project. When I release my project with Vorple extensions everything seems to be ok in browser, but again nothing in Story tab when I just click "Go!"


Solution

  • This is a semi-common problem. On Windows a blank story pane usually means that Windows Security or another virus app has quarantined the interpreter binaries. See this post from the maintainer of the Window IDE.