Welcome to The Alan IF Documentation Project
Here you will find the latest and greatest version of various documentation for the Alan Interactive Fiction Language, tools and libraries.
The Manual
The Language manual is the primary documentation of the Alan language from an author’s point of view.
It exists in two versions matching the two current development flows:
- The Beta Manual — describes the most recent Beta release of the Alan SDK
- The Alpha Manual — includes changes that are only in the development snapshots which will make it into the next beta release
The Alpha Manual is rebuilt and republished whenever the documentation changes, so it is always the most recent text. You can tell the two apart by the revision line under the title: the Alpha Manual is marked +dev (e.g. “ALAN Beta8+dev”), meaning it describes a development snapshot rather than a released SDK. The Beta Manual carries the plain release number and is updated only when a new Beta of the SDK is released.
Alan Cookbook
The ALAN Cookbook, by Anssi Räisänen, contains an extensive list of tips and tricks on how to program various things and achieve various effects in the ALAN language. It covers both basic things available in the Alan language, and more advanced topics supported by the Standard Library v2.
- Alan Cookbook v2
ALAN 3 Beginner’s Guide
Michael Arnaud’s Alan 3 Beginner’s Guide (2006) is an excellent step-by-step tutorial that will guide the reader through the creation of a full adventure using ALAN Library v0.6.2 — the TV TIME! adventure.
- Alan 3 Beginner’s Guide
NOTE: This guide is available in HTML only. Its step-by-step colour marking of changed code cannot currently be reproduced in PDF, so the old PDF edition — which rendered that marking incorrectly — has been withdrawn.
Alan Conversion Guide - v2 to v3
This document tries to ease the transition from Alan v2 to Alan v3. It discusses both differences and gives some hands-on tips on how to do the transition.
- Alan Conversion Guide from v2 to v3
Alan IDE Reference Guide
An excellent guide by Robert DeFord on how to install, configure and use the Alan IDE to craft text adventure in ALAN IF.
- Alan IDE Reference Guide — v1.0 (2018. final)
Alan Design Documents (VERY RUDIMENTARY AND PRELIMINARY!)
These documents are still incomplete, but might be helpful to better understand technical aspects about Alan and its design principles.
NOTE: These documents may be inaccurate in details.