JACL Author's Guide

JACL is a interpreted programming language for writing interactive fiction. Its standard library does the heavy lifting — the parser, the world model, 216 ready-built verbs — so the author can focus on the writing. The same source file runs unchanged under a Glk console interpreter and a web interpreter, so a finished game can ship as a downloadable .blorb, a browser-playable site, or both. This is the authoritative reference for the language, taking you from your first room to a finished game ready to publish online. A complete tutorial game is walked through step by step, then the full object, location, attribute and grammar reference is laid out for daily use. Later chapters cover the web interface library — with auto-save, voice synthesis and a clickable command bar — along with multimedia, menus, CSV-backed data and timed events. Three appendices list every attribute, every library verb, and the full source code of the tutorial game. Written by JACL's author, Stuart Allen, who has maintained the interpreter and its libraries since 1992. The interpreter is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License.