The Simplest Setup

The simplest setup is using AlanIDE for editing and compilation and Gargoyle as your GUI runner.

Setting Up AlanIDE

AlanIDE is an "Integrated Development Environment" which you can read more about here. To get AlanIDE running you need to:

1. Download and install the appropriate AlanIDE from the Download Area
2. Download the command line complete Alan package for your platform from the Download Area which you unpack in some suitable folder (C:\Program Files\Alan v3\bin is a suggestion for Windows).
3. (optional) Download the Alan standard library from the Download Area and unpack it (e.g in C:\Program Files\Alan v3\lib)
4. Start the AlanIDE
5. Go to the Preferences, find the Alan settings and point the compiler preference to where you stored the Alan command line compiler
6. (optional) Point the library preference to where you stored the standard library
7. Follow the videos from the AlanIDE page (of which the first shows items 5-6 above, and the second takes you through the creation of a small game)

Setting Up Gargoyle

Gargoyle is a multi-platform, multi-gameformat adventure runner/interpreter. With it you can run almost any type of adventure game available in the community for interactive fiction.

1. Download and install Gargoyle (or if you are on MacOS: from here, on Linux use your package manager)

Simple! If you managed to set up AlanIDE (or your OS) to recognize Alan game files (.a3c) you can now double-click on the resulting game file in the AlanIDE Navigator view. (If it doesn't show up there you can try updating that view using F5). You can also point Gargoyle to the resulting game, although a bit difficult to find since it is located inside the AlanIDE project structure, which might even be inside the installation, like AlanIDE.app/Content/MacOS/workspace/MyFirstProject on the Mac.

NOTE that Gargoyle is not always up-to-date with the latest Alan development and might require some extra steps to upgrade. An alternative to Gargoyle on the Windows OS is WinArun, which you can download from the interpreter download category. WinArun is always released together with any updated compiler.