Blorple

The blorple spell (explore an object's mystic connections). --Spellbreaker

Blorple is an IF metadata browser, written in Java. It aims eventually to be a fully unified front-end to a player's interactive fiction library, but its primary goal is to make it easy to view cover art and blurbs for presently released works.

Download Blorple here.. Blorple has official, self-contained releases for both Windows and Mac OS X, and also has a version that is simply an executable JAR file for other platforms. You will need at least version 1.5 of the Jave Runtime Environment to run Blorple; you can get the latest version from Sun's official Java site. Most modern computers ship with an acceptable version, so this is unlikely to be a problem.

mcmartin ---AT--- gmail ---DOT--- com

Using Blorple

Blorple provides an interface to your IF collection. There are two ways to do this:

• Choose "Scan..." from the File menu and select the directory that holds your IFs. Blorple will attempt to detect all files in that directory and child directories that are IFs. You can then edit the titles by calling up its file info from the Edit menu.
• A pre-made Blorple .iFiction record can be imported directly. These need to be specially prepared; a set of .iFiction files for the past Competitions will be available soon.

Once these files have been scanned, you may view its data by selecting it, and launch an appropriate interpreter by double-clicking it with the mouse, or by hitting Enter. If no interpreter is provided by default for that type, you may edit launchers in the "Launchers..." dialog under Settings.

How can I let Blorple automatically find IF I write?

Blorple is designed primarily to serve as a browser for works compliant with the Treaty of Babel. To be automatically scannable, your work needs to be compliant with it. This is usually done by attaching an .iFiction record to the work. How to do this depends on your authoring system:

• In Inform 7, all you should need to do is check the "Package up the Blorb File for release" button under "Settings". This will embed the iFiction record within the resulting .zblorb or .gblorb file. To add cover art, consult the Writing With Inform manual.
• In Inform 6, either use Inform 7 to republish, or use the babel tools to package in cover art and iFiction records directly. Adding modern IFIDs to Inform 6 programs is straightforward but beyond the scope of this tool.
• In TADS, either 2 or 3, iFiction records are synthesized from the GameInfo.txt resource. These in turn will be built by the compiler from the GameID object. The TADS 3 Workbench will generate one by default. Ensure that IFID, name, byline, and desc are defined. The byline should be "by The Author", with the author's name in place of The Author. Cover art may be added to any multimedia TADS file by naming the cover art CoverArt.jpg or CoverArt.png.
• All other authoring systems do not yet have iFiction or cover art support. To compensate for this, Blorple will associate hand-written iFiction files with story files. At the moment, this is done merely by looking at extensions; for instance, an ADRIFT game sample.taf will be described by a file sample.iFiction in the same directory.

Importable Indices

Blorple's "Import iFiction..." option is an experimental feature designed primarily for compilations. In the current version (0.4), the iFiction record must have Blorple annotations to import successfully.

Some sample Blorple indices are in this directory. They will provide basic information for all Babel-compliant entries in the Interactive Fiction Competition. Put each year's competition index in the base directory for that comp. Competitions from before 2000 may need special options to UNZIP to keep the filenames lowercase.