1.4. The Go! button

| Chapter 1: Welcome to Inform |

| 1.4. The Go! button

Clicking the Go button translates the text in the Source panel into a computer program which enacts the interactive fiction, and automatically sets it going (in the Game panel, which opens as needed).

If the Source is empty of text, Inform will be unable to create anything: it needs at least one name of a location where the drama can unfold. For reasons of tradition, such locations are normally called "rooms", though people have used them to represent anything from grassy fields to states of mind and other metaphorical places.

> "Midsummer Day"

> The Gazebo is a room.

Clicking Go with this text in the Source panel will result in a short delay, after which the Game panel will appear, from which we can explore this newly created world: an interactive fiction called "Midsummer Day". It will not be very exciting, since Inform has only five words to go on, but we can add more detail to the source at any point and then click Go again to try out the changes. (Note that there is no need to "quit" these explorations in the Game panel. When Go is clicked, any game already in progress is discarded in favour of the new version.)

Typing Ctrl-R has the same effect as clicking Go. Clicking on a "text" icon in this documentation copies the example text which follows it into the Source as if you had faithfully typed it out. (This icon is usually provided only for fairly long examples, but note that you can in fact copy and paste any text from this documentation into the source by selecting it with the mouse, typing Ctrl-C, then clicking to a position in the source and typing Ctrl-V.)

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